Aaron Huslage

The hard-fought battle between Barack Obama and John McCain comes to a head this coming Tuesday with the general election in the US. The public tracking polls all show Obama with a decent lead on McCain going into the big day. They basically seem to average out to Obama winning about 50% of the vote and McCain ending up with 44%. This may seem a small difference, but it is statistically significant given our country’s recent history. A Harris Interactive poll in 2004′s election had Kerry losing to Bush by 49% to 48% and it came out to just about that in the end.

McCain has been touting his “closing the gap” in some of his stump speeches over the past few days. This is an indication to me that his campaign knows that they are going to lose. McCain’s rhetoric has not only begun to sound increasingly desperate by using underdog terminology, but he (and his surrogates) are now attacking Obama with arguments that were heretofore unheard of in this campaign.

On October 4th, VP candidate Sarah Palin began talking about Obama’s connection with William Ayers, but this was only just the beginning. In the past few days they have brought up the failure of Obama to “spread the wealth” to his own family, his connection with a former PLO spokesman and his apparent socialist bent. These are attacks that are borne of a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” philosophy in the waning days of a losing campaign, but I think they are more than that in reality.

McCain knows he is going to lose. His campaign’s internal tracking polls are almost certainly telling him this. Cynicism has overtaken conservative American politics and this is its latest manifestation. The game now is to put as much doubt about Obama’s positions into the minds of the conservative base as is possible. This tactic will serve to grease the wheels for future political maneuvering whenever the GOP has something to rail against.

Even though these accusations often amount to nothing real, they feed an echo chamber of right-wing talk show hosts, bloggers and other activists that will harp on them for more than just a news cycle. They will bring up this garbage “news” whenever it is necessary to distract us from real issues. They will call Obama “anti-American” as they already have and continue to do. They will continue rob the already stretched attention spans of good people with drivel and hyperbole until that is all that is left. Only then has the proper amount of suspicion been cast into minds unprepared.

Instead of fostering true debate within our political system, they aim to supress it with hyperbole and deception. This is the most heinous form of the conservative war machine we have yet seen and is the culmination of 20 years of work by folks like Karl Rove. This has created a political system where critical thought is impossible and true disagreement meaningless. The default milieu for this scenario ends up being something like: “I disagree with you, therefore I hate you and you are un-American for even bringing it up. Let’s talk.”

Sadly we have chosen to allow this to happen in our society. The conservative movement, and even John McCain, used to have a place in my heart as true rivals to my liberal viewpoint. I did not agree with them, but I respected their positions. In recent months I have begun to see that movement as hopelessly broken and in need of serious overhaul. I can only hope that they survive this to fight another day with real issues and true meaning once again. America needs many points of view to thrive and resorting to dogma and cheap tricks that demean its citizens as unthinking voters is not particularly useful.

Obama will, I hope, help begin mitigate this insidious conservative cynicism with a new rhetoric of understanding. Bear in mind that this is not truly new, but a return to the philosophy that our country was founded upon. Anti-American indeed.